as he would be with the Manc derby, in which the ref played seven minutes of the four minutes of injury time scheduled. Coincidentally Man U scored the winner 6m58 into injury time. Choads. Key point is, got in the car feeling fucking fucked off with fucking fuckers from arsehole to breakfast time. Stuck a CD in the playa. And got Even's Black Umbrella. Thus, in a matter of moments, went the black mood by the wayside, replaced by a faraway grin and some fairly woeful attempts at harmonizing. Instant pain relief? Fuck Panadol. Just add Even.Even are my favourite underrated, underappreciated Aussie band. They don't really fit with the rest of my music collection, which is largely a bunch of garage punk acts, post-grunge metallurgists, old-skool four-on-the-floor rockers and Sunset Strip hair farmers - for further details see one's highly self-indulgent comment ref. tops albums around halfway through this lot (11.21am) - but I like that. They're resolutely old-skool in their own way, stuck between Sgt Peppers-era Beatles and Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie, and if frontman Ash Naylor's hair was any more 60s bowl-cut, Noel Gallagher would be asking for it back. But they make fucking awesome music. Soaring harmonies, irresistable riffs, just damn good songs. And lots of 'em.
I first came across Even - as much as I remember anyway - watching the Rage version of the '99 Hottest 100 at The Hovel in Randwick. The filmclip to Black Umbrella was a cleverly conceived, neatly executed one-shot exercise following Ash Naylor and a bunch of randoms through the streets - YouTube ain't allowed to stock it, courtesy the record companies of the world being abject arsehats who don't understand how music sells these days - and the song itself is a gem. First got to see them in 2001 when long-time colleague in league and master of disaster Moff scored half price Livid tickets on festival eve - we'd survived the refugee camp conditions of the previous year and swore Never Fkn Again to that lot of bollocks, but half price tix are half price tix, the ridiculous crowds and temperatures of the previous year were nowhere to be seen (probably because they'd booked no real big names) and we went and had a fucking good time. Longer version of that story and a bunch of other festy-related tales here. The afternoon Moff called with the offer we had the J's on in the lab and Even were playing a couple of their tracks live in studio. Found out they were playing on Sat and headed to the stage up the back amongst the Moreton Bay figs to see them go around, having just seen Eskimo Joe do their stuff in the Big Fuck Off Tent. And Even were good. One of those sets where the loudest sound in the back of your mind is pennies dropping - so this is who does that song. Not even some truly woeful standup between sets by a massively off-chops Wil Anderson - apparently Kieran Perkins' advertising claim to having his name on his milk is null and void because Klim is 'milk' backwards (I think I needed more drugs to make that funny. Don't think he did though) - nor the need to pissbolt halfway across the RNA showgrounds to catch anything more than the last couple of songs of Ash's mainstage set (Ash as in the Kung Fu artists not as in Naylor - and yeah they finished with Kung Fu and it Went FARKEN ORRFFF MAAAATE) dampened the afterglow from Even's set. Saw them again in 2003 at the Zoo with DMDY, the night after seeing the Black Keys thunder and tear through a deafeningly brilliant live show at the same venue - so I was tired, deaf and hungover - and yet they did great work again. More of that here as well.
Of course, only a handful of other peeps (relatively speaking) reckon the same. Even have only ever had a cult following, the sort of band that music critics rave about and everyone else ignores. Fair enough, a lot of music critics are navel-gazing one-upmanship-perpetuating wanktards, but the ones who say shit like 'If Ziggy Stardust hadn't burnt out he'd be fronting Even today' have to be on to something, other than a large pile of non-prescription pharmaceuticals. Despite releasing a bunch of albums that shoulda-coulda-oughta been igfuckenormous, Even got the arse from their original record label in the early-to-mid Noughties - much like their mates You Am I, except Timmahhh Rogers et al managed to bounce back with an EMI contract shortly thereafter. The J's don't play their stuff much any more - perhaps 3RRR do, but hey, who listens to community radio these days - and the feeling is that Even remain, now and in the future, the best-kept secret in Australian music. And that's a damn shame.
Bit of a treat to finish with - Even with Timmahhh and Davey Lane from You Am I cranking through the awesomest rock song in the history of awesome - other than Back In Black - the Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash, at Even's Xmas 2006 show. Sure the sound quality's arse and the vision's wobbly as fuck, but think of it as authentic gig ambience - after eight Heinekens and being camped ten feet from the PA all night, this is pretty much what you'd see and hear. Two fifths of fuck all.
So that's my ten cents (in Pacific Pesos) worth. Ladles and gintlepong, the floor is yours... favourite underrated, underappreciated band? Your time starts now. Approved course notes are permitted.
The Doctor is OUT.
16 comments:
Right, first and foremost I curse your ass for making me do this list. Secondly, Even were pretty cool. Never got right into them but saw heaps of supports with them featuring, and their album A Different High always has high rotation when people in vehicles get moving for long distances. But here goes my list:
The Frames - Ireland old skool working class melodic rockers who didn't fear rolling up the sleeves and getting crunchy. Led by singer/songwriter Glenn Hansard - who might be better known as the dude who stared in the movie Once, but less known as the guitarist in the movie The Commitments.
Jeff Lang - Oz blues aficionado who alternates between sea-faring ballads, poems from our convict past, and rock-Godery on the dual pick up acoustic guitar and stomp box.
Matt Walker and Ashley Davies - similar to Lang, lap steel blues guitar and drummer. The interplay can in this simple paring can kick you in the guts sometimes.
I have many others in this bluesy troubadour vein - Paul Greene, Holly Throsby, Tamas Wells.
But one which I can never get away from was Cordrazine - Hamish Cowan's haunting vocals, combined with great musicianship, interesting melodic structure and fucking downright amazing production meant their one and only album has been repeatedly worn out the Albion Den of Love.
That's all I can think of, for now.
Sorry to drop hip hop into this thread, no don't call the bouncers, I'll talk about guitars soon, I promise. Shin ki row came along about ten years too early, I reckon. They were a live hip hop band, dj, MC, bass, drums and even horns on occasion. It's my one true dissapointment that I never got to see them live, they'd disbanded by the time I got into the live hip hop. If they were around now the Js would play the fuck out of them.
The other is a band that was like a precurser to The Cat Empire, Phat Proffesor Funk. They were a little more straight funk than Cuban sounds, but the ten piece band would reach into my white man soul and find that little bit that could dance and give it a serious nudge. A five piece instrumental iteration called Kafka played at my wedding and is still kicking, but sadly the professor is not.
MATE< I still have to find that last god dam Album ya suggested yet and at the risk of gettin a pasting, half of them I have not heard...well possibly have but simply dont fkn know who the hell they are until some bastard points it out.
Underrateeeed band, hey.. hmm... I gotta say, they were sorta big for a sml period and thats because of one sng only, but the rest of their tracks are beautiful, highly structured and emotive to say the least. down right fucking depression some of them are and I'd be fucking selective as to who i would suggest them two dependant purely on their own current state of mind. For mine I cannot go past Redgum, quite possibly the Diamatina drover as a fav track, poor ned and some bloke who gets caught sitting on top of a boat load of dope off Timor I think. Then again Fabulon was pretty fkn wicked too.
Yeah, but the Bears beat the Steelers 17-14 on a last-minute field goal.
Best underappreciated, underrated band? Hmmm. That's always subjective.
I'll go with the band Head East, which goes back to the late 70s. Nothing fancy-just rock and roll.
Most underrated, underappreciated Aussie band? Hard to say. There's a lot of good acts there that get no airplay here. I've enjoyed Cat Empire (and disliked Silverchair). Obviously being older, I'm partial to your stuff from the 70s and 80s.
Jamin - 'curse my ass' my arse, you know you love it, I'd put yen on the fact you were probably emitting girly squeals of glee while making up a list like this. Even were sort of perennial supports there for a while, Probably indicative of their career arc. When we came over to NZ I had to leave a bunch of CDs behind and A Different High (and Come Again) were in their number - sure I'd ripped large swathes of them out onto compile CDs etc but I regret not bringing them over.
Is Matt Walker not a hundred thousand years old? Wasn't he the bloke from Chain?
Beeso - if they can play live, they're OK by me. (So not the fkn Vines then.) Security will not be dispatched.
Havock - lookie here - admittedly their last couple of albums have been a bit patchier - but the original self-titled debut (which looks like this was damn fine. They sound like this and this and this.
YDog - yeah never really rated the Chair. Guess because they were even younger than me when they hit the big time. At least their first album was engagingly stupid, everything since has been pretentious twaddle. Cat Empire's problem was that they had one good song and re-recorded it thirty times - of course a lot of bands did that, but CE's version of same got tiring faster.
Doc am i going to have to come over there and slap you round the ears? Cat empire are a fantastically diverse band! Live even better. One of the true highlights of The Rev was them playing a industry show for the fuctards at Nova. The room was only allowed to be half full, which was half industry types who networked and half my staff and mates who partied up a storm.
You can add sonic animation and Katalyst to the group of "crap live" or "running off a hard drive" bands
Seen 'em live, had to listen to their debut album on endless repeat in a previous workspace. I'm familiar with their work. Small doses. Which by DMDY's opinion equates to No Dose. Hates 'em.
That may be-again, Cat Empire gets no airplay here, so there's still a novelty factor.
You know, I don't need my bands to be 'pretentious' or have a big 'message'. I suspected Silverchair may have been such a group.
Yeah one of the things that annoyed me about Silverchair - and another popular-ish Aussie band, Eskimo Joe - was the way they completely bailed on their early material as soon as they started to get big, refusing to play it and slagging it off in interviews etc. Now, sure, wee Danny Johns might be a bit embarrassed about the naivete and teen-angstyness of Frogstomp, but there's a fucking lot of people who bought that album and without it he'd be flipping burgers at McDonalds in Hunter St Mall, Newcastle, so PLAY 'TOMORROW' AND LIKE IT SONNY. To be fair Eskimo Joe were even more punishingly snotty about the hits that made their career (Sweater, Ruby Tuesday etc.) Slag off your old material and you slag off the people who were into your old material - many of whom might still be your fans today, unless you keep carrying on like a prima donna princess.
Most underrated band? Sweet. Who would've thought that a band that could come out with Ballroom Blitz and Little Willy would just disappear?
Queensryche. Everyone I know that doesn't like them has lumped them in with just the other 80's hair metal bands, but their music is incredibly complex, the quality of Geoff Tate's voice is unbelievable, and they are just awesome.
And considering when I tell people that one of my favorite bands is Cheap Trick, their response is usually that they think I'm joking, I think Cheap Trick is also underrated.
By the way, being a Man City fan, I'm still fuming. No excuse whatsoever. Old Trafford would make a good pile of kindling.
Judging by how some of my own favourite underrated bands (the Datsuns and the Casanovas) cite Cheap Trick as an influence, I really should check their back catalogue out more. All I can remember them by is their late 80s stuff - 'The Flame' and that Elvis cover - which I suspect is not representative.
Another underrated act - though more successful than Even (if similar numbers of letters) - Reef from Engerland. Sort-of-forgotten members of the second wave of mid 90s Britpop, but they had some cool tunes, particularly on 'Glow' and their debut album before it.
Hav - how about Stewie? I saw Redgum a few times but that's a long time ago now.
Most underrated group? Back in the '80's possibly The Reels (Quasimodo's Dream is a classic) and The Sunnyboys. A minor shout out to the Lime Spiders.
That's me done then.
Yeah the Lime Spiders did some good work. The D4 (now defunct Kiwi garage punk band that melted my face off at a couple of festival shows) did a cover of their track 'Out Of Control' on their last record. I think all three of those 80s bands you mentioned turned up on the second disc of that fkn awesome compile Do The Pop about Australian garage rock in the late 70s and 80s. Full of good stuff.
Cheap Trick cites The Who as an influence, and you can kind of tell in their earlier stuff. My favorite songs from them are their 70's and early 80's, but I'll admit, I liked "Lap of Luxury." Their label wanted this one to have more of a broad appeal, which is why it kind of strayed from their earlier stuff.
The one thing that comes through in their music....they don't take themselves too seriously, and they sound like they have a lot of fun doing what they do (you can definitely tell in their live concerts).
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